Grain crops in Project Zomboid

Grain is new with Build 42. Build 41 had no way to grow wheat or make flour, so any guide that says flour is loot only is out of date. The current crop data has three cereal crops: winter wheat, rye and barley. Flax shares their growing profile but is a fiber crop, not a food grain. Oats do not appear as a plantable crop in the data we checked.

Corn is the other route to flour-like products, with its own drying and grinding recipes for cornflour and cornmeal. Compare all crops on crop data.

Grain is a slow, cold-season crop. Sow it from August to October, ideally in September, and expect about 108 days before harvest. June and July are bad months to plant. Because all three grains are cold hardy, they are not cursed on the first day of winter the way tender crops are, so a September sowing can grow through December to February and finish in spring.

• Seeds turn up in farm crates, animal feed crates and wheat seed sacks.
• Keep the soil above the minimum water level of 30. A crop that hits zero water dies.
• Fertilizer or compost speeds growth, but three or more uses curses the plant.

For watering, disease and fertilizer details read crop care and farming. For month by month planning see seasons and crops.

Opinion Plant grain in a large block well away from the house. It needs little attention for months, and a bigger field matters because grinding eats a lot of grain per bag of flour.

Harvest a ripe grain plant to get a sheaf: Wheat Sheaf, Rye Sheaf or Barley Sheaf. A fresh wheat sheaf weighs 1.0, stays fresh for about 7 days and rots after about 14, so dry your harvest soon.

Drying happens at a drying rack. The Dry Wheat, Dry Rye and Dry Barley recipes each turn a fresh sheaf into a dried one, and the rack accepts up to 20 sheaves at a time. The recipe time in the data is 172,800, which looks like 48 hours if the unit is seconds; that has not been confirmed in game. Similar drying recipes exist for herbs, tobacco, leather and grass, so a second rack is rarely wasted. See food preservation for other rack uses.

Dried sheaves also spawn as loot in farm and animal feed crates, which gives you a head start before your first harvest.

Threshing separates the grain from the stalk. The Thresh Grain recipe takes one dried wheat, rye or barley sheaf and uses it up. The grain that comes out is used as Wheat Seeds, Rye Seeds or Barley Seeds; the same item serves for both planting and grinding.

The recipe listing we checked does not show the exact yield of grain per sheaf or whether straw is produced, so check the result in game before planning a large field around a fixed number.

Opinion Before you grind anything, set aside enough seed for next season. Packing them five at a time with Put 5 Seeds in Packet keeps them tidy and light.

Flour comes from a stone grinding station. Both recipes take 12 grain in any mix of wheat, rye and barley and make 1 Flour (weight 2.0).

The stone quern is built with Masonry 1 from one stone wheel, two small stone wheels and a medium handle. The stone mill is about three times faster per batch going by recipe time; its build cost was not confirmed. The quern counts as a masonry build; we did not confirm how the stone wheels themselves are made.

Flour is the base of bread, pie dough and cake batter (see cooking and recipes), and it can thicken soups and stews. Home-milled flour lets you bake the dishes on best meals long after stores are empty.

Sheaves and grain are tagged as seed-type animal feed, so they can feed livestock (see ranching). For bedding and fodder, Build 42 also lets you scythe grass and dry it on a rack. We could not confirm a separate straw item from threshing in current data.